ATC: Unravelling the mystery
by JosefVStalin
Summary: A minor employee in ATC, Jack Peters, learns of a top-secret project, known only as Origin, and sets out to unravel the mystery of what's going on behind closed doors at ATC. Prequel, leads up to first F.E.A.R. game


Hello everyone.

This is my first story on this site, or rather, the first on any site on the internet. I try to stick as close as possible to the real personalities of the characters, using mostly characters from the actual games. The obvious exception to this is the first character mentioned in the novel, Jack Peters. Other than him, all the facts have been obtained from .com, the official F.E.A.R. wiki. This is the first part of my story, and I hope to finish it soon, with my intended climax being the events leading into the first F.E.A.R. game, which was the second synchronicity event. I'm sorry if my story seems to be a little dull, but I'm just trying to build a little personality for my characters. Lastly, I wish to point out that, although I do have an endpoint for my story in mind, I'm just making it up as I go. Enjoy, and any and all reviews are always helpful.

Jack Peters looked up at the clock hanging on the wall of his office cubicle. The time read 9:22 A.M. Jack quickly calculated that the hundreds of hours that he thought he had spent in this damn building doing some bullshit computerized paperwork nobody was going to see anyways only turned out to have been about 45 minutes of bullshit work.

The phone on his desk rang once, and he picked it up immediately, thankful for some sort of break from his damn work.

"This is Jack."

An automated voice sounded over the receiver, and there was some sort of strange discrepancy when his name was said.

"Hello Jack. Congratulations! You have won a prize! To receive your prize, please dial the number 1-80-"

Jack recognised the telemarketer ploy almost immediately, and slammed the phone back down on the receiver before the machine had time to finish its message. He turned back to his monitor to continue his boring assignment. He had three emails, the first of which was labelled "Project Origin last year's inventory records", the second labelled "Project Origin inventory adjustments", and the final one labelled "Project Origin current inventory status. Today's job was to take the previous year's inventory records from the first email, add or subtract the amount of inventory signed in or out according to the second email, and make sure that there were no discrepancies between his calculations and the amount in the third email. _Another shit job_, Jack thought to himself. _I feel sorry for the poor bastard that has to count all the items in storage. Hell, I don't even know what this "Project Origin" crap is._

After one-and-a-half mind-numbingly mundane hours later, Jack finished with all the calculations. At least he had a program that could do the calculations for him, so he wouldn't have to wear his thumbs away on a calculator. Jack silently hoped to himself that the inventory didn't add up correctly. He opened up the final email containing the records for the current year, copied the entire email, and pasted it into another program. He did the same with his own results, and ran the program.

A minute later, the computer beeped, indicating that the program had done its duty. The phrase "Documents match" appeared in green at the bottom, and Jack sighed to himself. Well, at least he didn't need to do anything else with this Project Origin shit. Some of the chemicals, like the chloroform, had him on edge, and what was with the arsenal that had enough guns and ammunition to run a small war? Probably security measures, Jack thought to himself unconvincingly. _Maybe I should just dump this job and join security. I bet they get paid better, and I might even get a chance to kick some ass if shit hits the fan._ Jack fantasized for a moment about what being in a firefight inside his own office would be like, and he liked it. He then thought of what it would be like to get shot, and didn't like it so much.

Focusing back on his work, Jack started typing up his final email that he was going to send to his boss, Phil Vecchio.

"Record of this year runs parallel to last years records, plus/minus changes. No discrepancies detected."

Jack quickly scanned the document to make sure everything was in order.

# of fuel (litres) = 1760304 # of fuel (litres) = -52 # of fuel (litres) = 1760252

# of N6A3 Frag Grenades = 15000 # of N6A3 Frag Grenades = +/- 0 # of N6A3 Frag Grenades = 15000

# of Shark FL-3 Lasers = 5000 # of Blazer LM10 = -1 # of Blazer LM10 = 4999

That's strange,Jack thought. The Shark FL-3 laser was developed a few years ago, and only one was purchased. Generally the military would purchase them in groups of at least a hundred, so that they could be used in black ops. Apparently, though, only one was signed out. Jack wondered if one of the directors decided to have a go with the gun and kept it, or if one was lost and the requisition officer decided to report that it was signed out just to save his own ass. Or maybe someone from a rival company signed out – and subsequently stole – the gun, which might be a problem.

Jack decided he wouldn't worry Phil about it, but decided to tell that Brit Brett Clarke about the potentially missing weapon in case Brett decided to investigate during his lunch break. Jack started typing up his email, which stated his opinion, and hit send.

Jack glanced back at the clock, which read 11: 06, and silently groaned to himself that his own lunch break would still be an hour away.

Phil Vecchio heard a beep from his computer. He looked up from the sudoku puzzle from yesterday's paper that he was still working on and shook the mouse to wake the monitor up. He checked his emails, and found that he had one new message. It was from Jack Peters, the guy he had tasked with one of the shit jobs that fell under the new category that some of the lower staff had made up: cruel and unusual punishment.

Phil opened up the email, and, after scrolling past all the records, read the only lines he really gave a shit about:

"Record of this year runs parallel to last years records, plus/minus changes. No discrepancies detected."

_Well, No shit, _thought Phil. _There hasn't been anything interesting happening in this facility since that fucking synchronicity event way back –._

Phil stopped himself there. Even thinking about that debacle almost 20 years ago still give him chills.

The phone on his desk suddenly rang, and Phil was glad to have something to interrupt his thoughts. Phil picked up the phone in the middle of its second ring.

"This is Phil"

"Hello Phil. Congratulations! You have won a –."

Phil slammed the phone down on his desk. He was starting to get annoyed with the reports from his colleagues about the alleged telemarketer calls, but didn't expect until now that he would actually get called himself. And how did it know his name? This was a private number for a private company of world-class scientists that very few people outside the company itself even know about.

Phil forwarded the email sent from Jack over to their head scientist, Harlan Wade, and went back to his sudoku puzzle.

Jack glanced up at the clock for the hundredth time, which read 11:58. He reached under his desk for his lunch, but remembered that he hadn't had enough time to pack one that morning. Instead, he walked down to the vending machine down the hall to buy something, and found that fat bastard Norton Mapes trying to buy some Cheezee Pooz.

Jack sighed and continued down to the elevator, heading to the overpriced cafeteria. 10 minutes later, Jack purchased some slop that vaguely resembled the meatloaf he had ordered, and sat down at a table next to Walt Gragg, that guy from corporate. _Lucky bastard has his office closest to the caf and farthest from the building's entrance as possible_, Jack though in both contempt and jealousy, and for a moment he imagined himself having Walt's office, pretending he needed to leave early because he had a long walk, when he would just want to do less work. _I bet Walt has all the fun jobs too, like dealing with this Project Origin bullshit. _Jack looked up at Walt, and decided to ask him.

"Hey, do you know anything about something called Project Origin? I had to file some report about some weird inventory lists earlier for it, and half the stuff is kinda creepy. Know anything about it?"

"Sorry," replied Walt, "but I don't have a clue about it either. Some of the directors decided that it's need-to-know, and apparently I don't need to know."

"Alright then, I guess I'll just have to figure out why we need an arsenal that rivals the black market on my own."

Walt finished his meal, stood up and left. Jack continued eating, vaguely aware of his departure, but very aware when that hot research analyst Alice Wade sat down next to him. Alice was Harlan's daughter, the very same Harlan that was the boss of his boss, Phil Vecchio. For some time now, Jack was thinking of getting with Alice, but didn't want to mess with Mr. Wade's daughter, or Harlan would pass more shit jobs onto Phil, who would in turn pass them on to him.

Jack thought about making a move on Alice, but decided against it after a few minutes. Instead, he finished his meal, got up, and left. Jack checked the wall clock on his way out, which read 12:25, and walked past Phil on his way to the weight room, where he planned to spend the rest of his lunch hour.

Phil had finished his sandwich, glanced at the clock (which read 12:19), and decided he still had some time to try out the shooting range down by the cafeteria. About five minutes later, after passing one of his staff in the hallway, Phil reached the secluded elevator that led downstairs. He pushed the button to call the elevator, and was greeted by Charles Habegger, who appeared to be going down to the range as well. Phil felt like saying something, but before he could speak, the elevator doors dinged open. The both of them entered, and Chuck pressed the button labelled B4, where the shooting range was located, as well as several other facilities like the medical centre and the maintenance room.

The universally displeasing elevator music started playing almost immediately, and Phil decided to break the annoying "silence" by striking up conversation. However, Chuck beat him to it.

"So, going to spend some time on the range?"

"Yep, I feel some sort of need to learn how to shoot straight."

"I know how you feel. Well, I'm down here to tell the IT guys that the damn phones are broken again, and spend the rest of lunch trying to explain to that half-wit why I couldn't just call him up."

"The phones are down? That's strange, I just got a call from some machine telling me I won a prize."

"Yeah, that's just some virus that some asshole decided to plant into the system, and that's actually stopping the phone lines from working. I'm gonna try to get the guy to trace it back to it's source and unplug it somehow. It's also why you can't delete your phone messages."

"Alright, well, tell me how it goes."

The doors opened, and they both exited, Phil first. Chuck reached the maintenance room first, and said bye to Phil. Phil continued down the hall, and reached the range. He walked through the metal detector and up to the counter, where he borrowed a Rakow AT-14 pistol and two boxes of .40 cal ammunition. Phil took his armament to the closest available space, donned the earmuffs hanging on the wall, put a target up on the wire, and sent it back. As he was getting ready to fire, he glanced over at the spot next to him, where the security chief Colonel Richard Vanek absolutely wasted his target with four sprays from his Vollmer Ultra92 semi-automatic shotgun. Not to be outdone, Phil carefully put ten rounds into the head of his target in a spread no bigger than an iPod. Vanek noticed Phil's precision, sent another target about halfway, and cut the body of the target off of the head, leaving only the head attached to the wire and the rest floating down. As Vanek retracted the target and reloaded, Phil sent his next target all the way to the back and managed to put another fifteen rounds into the head with the same spread as before. The two continued to go back and forth like this until both of them ran out of ammunition. As they went back to the counter to return the guns, Vanek turned to Phil.

"You did some pretty good shootin' back there for a pencil-pusher."

Phil replied with a "Yeah, I've been practicing by hiding some video games under my desk."

Vanek showed disapproval at even a joke as small at that, but didn't want to show that an aforementioned "pencil-pusher" had gotten his goad so quickly.

"Of course, taking that much time to aim with a fucking pistol won't safe your life when shit hits the fan and you need to kill first. That's why the auto-shotgun's the way to go: less accuracy, more speed, and a nice mess to leave behind to tell everyone that you just fucked someone's day over, and they're next."

Phil just nodded, know that getting into a debate with this guy about guns was like banging one's head against a wall, and possibly twice as likely to cause brain damage. Phil excused himself and left through the same metal detectors he had come through on the way in, now going back to his office.

The elevator doors dinged open, and Jack continued walking back to his office. On the way, he met found Aldus getting a coffee from the machine, and approached him.

"How does it taste?"

Aldus looked up from a sip and responded, "Tastes like my new job."

"What happened? You get promoted?"

"Sort of. I'm part of something called the _Origin Anomalies Task Force._ That basically means that the directors fuck shit up, and I have to clean up the mess without learning jack about what's going on."

"Yeah, I had to do some inventory on that, and some of the stuff is kinda creepy. I mean, seriously, why the fuck do we need flamethrowers? Anyways, let me know if you come up with anything."

"Well, a lot of it is company secrets and stuff, but we've known each other since University, so it's not like you're gonna run to the cops about it. I'm actually tasked with researching that wastewater treatment plant just downstream of here."

"Wow, that place probably smells like shit."

"Exactly. Well, at least I'm partnered with Alice Wade."

"Oh, well it shouldn't be too bad then."

"Yeah. It was actually her idea to investigate the place."

Aldus and Jack both looked up at the clock in unison, which read 12:52.

"Well, I gotta get back to work."

"Alright then. You take care, Aldus."

"You too, Jack."

Jack walked back to his office cubicle as Aldus went, well, wherever the hell he went, with his coffee.

Back in his office, Jack's phone rang again.

"Jack Peters"

"Hey Jack," said the voice on the other end of the line, one that he recognised to belong to Walt Gragg. "I was wondering if you wanted to go out for dinner tonight. You do? Great, I'll meet you at that new restaurant in town, Red Water, around 7:30 tonight. See you there!"

"Wait, what?" was all Jack could get out before Gragg hung up, and the line went dead.

The time was 7:49, and Jack was more mystified than excited for the impromptu meeting with Mr. Gragg, especially since Gragg had yet to show up. Finally, as Jack was getting up to leave, Walt walked through the doors, noticing Jack, but continuously looking around for something. Walt slowly made his way over to Jack, and it took him a minute to traverse the relatively short distance.

"Mr. Gragg, if you don't mind me asking, what the hell is going on?"

Walt ordered a Shiraz, and looked at Jack very seriously when he began to speak.

"Jack, forget the formalities; you wanted to know about Project Origin?

"Well, yeah…"

"Well, I went exploring through some back-logged computer reports, and from what I can tell, there are a lot of projects going on I didn't know about. Perseus, Icarus, Pythagoras, the list goes on. Most of them are classified. From what I can tell, Icarus was a project to reverse the effects of loss of bone and muscle density due to space travel and lack of gravity. It was discontinued, and merged with Perseus, which is supposed to be some top-secret project to produce, well, some sort of military products and sell them to the military. Pythagoras was the least classified one, and it was about developing a pill to improve someone's mathematical aptitude."

"That's quite a broad spectrum of assignments for a single corporation," said Jack. "What about Origin?"

"Most of it was classified as well. From what I can tell, the idea came from the Vietnam war, and it's somehow connected with Perseus, but even that was hard to figure out. Hell, even the document that I had access to was coded, and I still have a computer trying to decode the document."

Walt's drink arrived, and he took a sip from it.

Jack's turn to talk: "Why are you telling me?"

Walt looked up. "Well, you're the one that asked, and this stuff sounds kinda sketchy to me too. I'm pretty sure you want to figure out what's happening behind closed doors in our company just as much as I do, and besides, it sure beats real work."


End file.
